A random vector $X$ with representation $X=\sum_{j\geq0}A_jZ_j$ is considered. Here, $(Z_j)$ is a sequence of independent and identically distributed random vectors and $(A_j)$ is a sequence of random matrices, `predictable' with respect to the sequence $(Z_j)$. The distribution of $Z_1$ is assumed to be multivariate regular varying. Moment conditions on the matrices $(A_j)$ are determined under which the distribution of $X$ is regularly varying and, in fact, `inherits' its regular variation from that of the $(Z_j)$'s. We compute the associated limiting measure. Examples include linear processes, random coefficient linear processes such as stochastic recurrence equations, random sums and stochastic integrals.
Let F be a distribution function with negative mean and regularly varying right tail. Under a mild smoothness condition we derive higher order asymptotic expansions for the tail distribution of the maxima of the random walk generated by F. An application to ruin probabilities is developed.
The goal of this paper is an exhaustive investigation of the link between the tail measure of a regularly varying time series and its spectral tail process, independently introduced in Owada and Samorodnitsky (2012) and Basrak and Segers (2009). Our main result is to prove in an abstract framework that there is a one to one correspondance between these two objets, and given one of them to show that it is always possible to build a time series of which it will be the tail measure or the spectral tail process. For non negative time series, we recover results explicitly or implicitly known in the…
In this paper, we study the weak convergence of the extremes of supercritical branching Lévy processes $\{\mathbb{X}_t, t \ge0\}$ whose spatial motions are Lévy processes with regularly varying tails. The result is drastically different from the case of branching Brownian motions. We prove that, when properly renormalized, $\mathbb{X}_t$ converges weakly. As a consequence, we obtain a limit theorem for the order statistics of $\mathbb{X}_t$.
A regularly varying time series as introduced in Basrak and Segers (2009) is a (multivariate) time series such that all finite dimensional distributions are multivariate regularly varying. The extremal behavior of such a process can then be described by the index of regular variation and the so-called spectral tail process, which is the limiting distribution of the rescaled process, given an extreme event at time 0. As shown in Basrak and Segers (2009), the stationarity of the underlying time series implies a certain structure of the spectral tail process, informally known as the "time change …
We provide a new extension of Breiman's Theorem on computing tail probabilities of a product of random variables to a multivariate setting. In particular, we give a complete characterization of regular variation on cones in $[0,\infty)^d$ under random linear transformations. This allows us to compute probabilities of a variety of tail events, which classical multivariate regularly varying models would report to be asymptotically negligible. We illustrate our findings with applications to risk assessment in financial systems and reinsurance markets under a bipartite network structure.
We consider solutions to so-called stochastic fixed point equation $R \stackrel{d}{=} Ψ(R)$, where $Ψ$ is a random Lipschitz function and $R$ is a random variable independent of $Ψ$. Under the assumption that $Ψ$ can be approximated by the function $x \mapsto Ax+B$ we show that the tail of $R$ is comparable with the one of $A$, provided that the distribution of $\log (A\vee 1) $ is tail equivalent. In particular we obtain new results for the random difference equation.
We study the extremes of multivariate regularly varying random fields. The crucial tools in our study are the tail field and the spectral field, notions that extend the tail and spectral processes of Basrak and Segers (2009). The spatial context requires multiple notions of extremal index, and the tail and spectral fields are applied to clarify these notions and other aspects of extremal clusters. An important application of the techniques we develop is to the Brown-Resnick random fields.
The goal of this paper is to investigate the tools of extreme value theory originally introduced for discrete time stationary stochastic processes (time series), namely the tail process and the tail measure, in the framework of continuous time stochastic processes with paths in the space $\mathcal{D}$ of càdlàg functions indexed by $\mathbb{R}$, endowed with Skorohod's $J_1$ topology. We prove that the essential properties of these objects are preserved, with some minor (though interesting) differences arising. We first obtain structural results which provide representation for homogeneous shi…
A notion of tail dependence based on operator regular variation is introduced for copulas, and the standard tail dependence used in the copula literature is included as a special case. The non-standard tail dependence with marginal power scaling functions having possibly distinct tail indexes is investigated in detail. We show that the copulas with operator tail dependence, incorporated with regularly varying univariate margins, give rise to a rich class of the non-standard multivariate regularly varying distributions. We also show that under some mild conditions, the copula of a non-standard …
We consider an infinitely divisible random field indexed by $\mathbb{R}^d$, $d\in\mathbb{N}$, given as an integral of a kernel function with respect to a Lévy basis with a Lévy measure having a regularly varying right tail. First we show that the tail of its supremum over any bounded set is asymptotically equivalent to the right tail of the Lévy measure times the integral of the kernel. Secondly, when observing the field over an appropriately increasing sequence of continuous index sets, we obtain an extreme value theorem stating that the running supremum converges in distribution to the Fréch…
Two of the most popular approximations for the distribution of the steady-state waiting time, $W_{\infty}$, of the M/G/1 queue are the so-called heavy-traffic approximation and heavy-tailed asymptotic, respectively. If the traffic intensity, $ρ$, is close to 1 and the processing times have finite variance, the heavy-traffic approximation states that the distribution of $W_{\infty}$ is roughly exponential at scale $O((1-ρ)^{-1})$, while the heavy tailed asymptotic describes power law decay in the tail of the distribution of $W_{\infty}$ for a fixed traffic intensity. In this paper, we assume a …
Multivariate stochastic recurrence equations (SREs) are investigated when coefficients are triangular matrices. If coefficient matrices of SREs have all strictly positive elements, the Kesten's classical result yields solutions with regularly varying tails such that the tail indices of solutions are the same through coordinates. This framework is too restrictive for applications. In order to widen the applicability of the SREs, we study SREs with triangular matrix coefficients and prove that they have regularly varying solutions which may exhibit coordinate-wisely different tail exponents. We …
We develop a framework for regularly varying measures on complete separable metric spaces $\mathbb{S}$ with a closed cone $\mathbb{C}$ removed, extending material in Hult & Lindskog (2006), Das, Mitra & Resnick (2013). Our framework provides a flexible way to consider hidden regular variation and allows simultaneous regular variation properties to exist at different scales and provides potential for more accurate estimation of probabilities of risk regions. We apply our framework to iid random variables in $\mathbb{R}_+^\infty$ with marginal distributions having regularly varying tails and to …
The tail process $\boldsymbol{Y}=(Y_{\boldsymbol{i}})_{\boldsymbol{i}\in\mathbb{Z}^d}$ of a stationary regularly varying random field $\boldsymbol{X}=(X_{\boldsymbol{i}})_{\boldsymbol{i}\in\mathbb{Z}^d}$ represents the asymptotic local distribution of $\boldsymbol{X}$ as seen from its typical exceedance over a threshold $u$ as $u\to\infty$. Motivated by the standard Palm theory, we show that every tail process satisfies an invariance property called exceedance-stationarity and that this property, together with the polar decomposition of the tail process, characterizes the class of all tail pro…
We develop importance sampling based efficient simulation techniques for three commonly encountered rare event probabilities associated with random walks having i.i.d. regularly varying increments; namely, 1) the large deviation probabilities, 2) the level crossing probabilities, and 3) the level crossing probabilities within a regenerative cycle. Exponential twisting based state-independent methods, which are effective in efficiently estimating these probabilities for light-tailed increments are not applicable when the increments are heavy-tailed. To address the latter case, more complex and …
We study how to sample paths of a random walk up to the first time it crosses a fixed barrier, in the setting where the step sizes are iid with negative mean and have a regularly varying right tail. We introduce a desirable property for a change of measure to be suitable for exact simulation. We study whether the change of measure of Blanchet and Glynn (2008) satisfies this property and show that it does so if and only if the tail index $α$ of the right tail lies in the interval $(1, \, 3/2)$.
For a continuous-time catalytic branching random walk (CBRW) on Z, with an arbitrary finite number of catalysts, we study the asymptotic behavior of position of the rightmost particle when time tends to infinity. The mild requirements include the regular variation of the jump distribution tail for underlying random walk and the well-known L log L condition for the offspring numbers. In our classification, given in the previous paper, the analysis refers to supercritical CBRW. The principle result demonstrates that, after a proper normalization, the maximum of CBRW converges in distribution to …
We investigate the probability that an insurance portfolio gets ruined within a finite time period under the assumption that the r largest claims are (partly) reinsured. We show that for regularly varying claim sizes the probability of ruin after reinsurance is also regularly varying in terms of the initial capital, and derive an explicit asymptotic expression for the latter. We establish this result by leveraging recent developments on sample-path large deviations for heavy tails. Our results allow, on the asymptotic level, for an explicit comparison between two well-known large-claim reinsur…
Abel-Tauberian theorems relate power law behavior of distributions and their transforms. We formulate and prove a multivariate version for non-standard regularly varying measures on $\mathbb{R}_+^p$ and then apply it to prove that the joint distribution of in- and out-degree in a directed edge preferential attachement model has jointly regularly varying tails.
In this paper we address the problem of rare-event simulation for heavy-tailed Lévy processes with infinite activities. We propose a strongly efficient importance sampling algorithm that builds upon the sample path large deviations for heavy-tailed Lévy processes, stick-breaking approximation of extrema of Lévy processes, and the randomized debiasing Monte Carlo scheme. The proposed importance sampling algorithm can be applied to a broad class of Lévy processes and exhibits significant improvements in efficiency when compared to crude Monte-Carlo method in our numerical experiments.
The objective of this paper is to extend an estimation method of parameters of the stable distributions in $\rd$ to the regularly varying tails distributions in an arbitrary cone. The consistency and the asymptotic normality of estimators are proved. The sampling method of regrouping is modified to optimize the rate of convergence of estimators.
It is well known that the product of two independent regularly varying random variables with the same tail index is again regularly varying with this index. In this paper, we provide sharp sufficient conditions for the regular variation property of product-type functions of regularly varying random vectors, generalizing and extending the univariate theory in various directions. The main result is then applied to characterize the regular variation property of products of iid regularly varying quadratic random matrices and of solutions to affine stochastic recurrence equations under non-standard…
This paper addresses heavy-tailed large deviation estimates for the distribution tail of functionals of a class of spectrally one-sided Lévy process. Our contribution is to show that these estimates remain valid in a near-critical regime. This complements recent similar results that have been obtained for the all-time supremum of such processes. Specifically, we consider local asymptotics of the all-time supremum, the supremum of the process until exiting $[0,\infty)$, the maximum jump until that time, and the time it takes until exiting $[0,\infty)$. The proofs rely, among other things, on pr…
For a sequence of random variables $(X_1, X_2, \ldots, X_n)$, $n \geq 1$, that are independent and identically distributed with a regularly varying tail with index $-α$, $α\geq 0$, we show that the contribution of the maximum term $M_n \triangleq \max(X_1,\ldots,X_n)$ in the sum $S_n \triangleq X_1 + \cdots +X_n$, as $n \to \infty$, decreases monotonically with $α$ in stochastic ordering sense.
When a spatial process is recorded over time and the observation at a given time instant is viewed as a point in a function space, the result is a time series taking values in a Banach space. To study the spatio-temporal extremal dynamics of such a time series, the latter is assumed to be jointly regularly varying. This assumption is shown to be equivalent to convergence in distribution of the rescaled time series conditionally on the event that at a given moment in time it is far away from the origin. The limit is called the tail process or the spectral process depending on the way of rescali…
There exist two ways of defining regular variation of a time series in a star-shaped metric space: either by the distributions of finite stretches of the series or by viewing the whole series as a single random element in a sequence space. The two definitions are shown to be equivalent. The introduction of a norm-like function, called modulus, yields a polar decomposition similar to the one in Euclidean spaces. The angular component of the time series, called angular or spectral tail process, captures all aspects of extremal dependence. The stationarity of the underlying series induces a trans…
We study limiting properties of ratios of ordered points of point processes whose intensity measures have regularly varying tails, giving a systematic treatment which points the way to "large-trimming" properties of extremal processes and a variety of applications. Our point process approach facilitates a connection with the negative binomial process of Gregoire (1984) and consequently to certain generalised versions of the Poisson-Dirichlet distribution.
A second-order Galton-Watson process with immigration can be represented as a coordinate process of a 2-type Galton-Watson process with immigration. Sufficient conditions are derived on the offspring and immigration distributions of a second-order Galton-Watson process with immigration under which the corresponding 2-type Galton-Watson process with immigration has a unique stationary distribution such that its common marginals are regularly varying. In the course of the proof sufficient conditions are given under which the distribution of a second-order Galton-Watson process (without immigrati…
We study the extremes of branching random walks under the assumption that the underlying Galton-Watson tree has infinite progeny mean. It is assumed that the displacements are either regularly varying or they have lighter tails. In the regularly varying case, it is shown that the point process sequence of normalized extremes converges to a Poisson random measure. We study the asymptotics of the scaled position of the rightmost particle in the $n$-th generation when the tail of the displacement behaves like $\exp(-K(x))$, where either $K$ is a regularly varying function of index $r> 0$, or $K$ …
We extend classical results by A. V. Nagaev [Izv. Akad. Nauk UzSSR Ser. Fiz.--Mat. Nauk 6 (1969) 17--22, Theory Probab. Appl. 14 (1969) 51--64, 193--208] on large deviations for sums of i.i.d. regularly varying random variables to partial sum processes of i.i.d. regularly varying vectors. The results are stated in terms of a heavy-tailed large deviation principle on the space of càdlàg functions. We illustrate how these results can be applied to functionals of the partial sum process, including ruin probabilities for multivariate random walks and long strange segments. These results make preci…
Let $X(t), t\in \mathcal{T}$ be a centered Gaussian random field with variance function $σ^2(\cdot)$ that attains its maximum at the unique point $t_0\in \mathcal{T}$, and let $M(\mathcal{T}):=\sup_{t\in \mathcal{T}} X(t)$. For $\mathcal{T}$ a compact subset of $\R$, the current literature explains the asymptotic tail behaviour of $M(\mathcal{T})$ under some regularity conditions including that $1- σ(t)$ has a polynomial decrease to 0 as $t \to t_0$. In this contribution we consider more general case that $1- σ(t)$ is regularly varying at $t_0$. We extend our analysis to random fields defined …
For the basic case of $L_2$ optimal transport between two probability measures on a Euclidean space, the regularity of the coupling measure and the transport map in the tail regions of these measures is studied. For this purpose, Robert McCann's classical existence and uniqueness results are extended to a class of possibly infinite measures, finite outside neighbourhoods of the origin. For convergent sequences of pairs of such measures, the stability of the multivalued transport maps is considered, and a useful notion of locally uniform convergence of these maps is verified under light assumpt…
In this article, we consider a branching random walk on the real-line where displacements coming from the same parent have jointly regularly varying tails. The genealogical structure is assumed to be a supercritical Galton-Watson tree, satisfying Kesten-Stigum condition. We study the large deviations of the extremal process, formed by the appropriately normalized positions in the $n$-th generation and show that the large extreme-positions form clusters in the limit. As a consequence of this, we also study the large deviations of the maximum among positions at the $n$-th generation.
We study large deviation probabilities for a sum of dependent random variables from a heavy-tailed factor model, assuming that the components are regularly varying. We identify conditions where both the factor and the idiosyncratic terms contribute to the behaviour of the tail-probability of the sum. A simple conditional Monte Carlo algorithm is also provided together with a comparison between the simulations and the large deviation approximation. We also study large deviation probabilities for stochastic processes with factor structure. The processes involved are assumed to be Levy processes …
We propose a class of strongly efficient rare event simulation estimators for random walks and compound Poisson processes with a regularly varying increment/jump-size distribution in a general large deviations regime. Our estimator is based on an importance sampling strategy that hinges on the heavy-tailed sample path large deviations result recently established in Rhee, Blanchet, and Zwart (2016). The new estimators are straightforward to implement and can be used to systematically evaluate the probability of a wide range of rare events with bounded relative error. They are "universal" in the…
We study the behavior of the tail of a measure $μ^{\boxtimes t}$, where $\boxtimes t$ is the $t$-fold free multiplicative convolution power for $t\geq 1$. We focus on the case where $μ$ is a probability measure on the positive half-line with a regularly varying tail i.e. of the form $x^{-α} L(x)$, where $L$ is slowly varying. We obtain a phase transition in the behavior of the tail of $μ^{\boxplus t}$ between regimes $α<1$ and $α>1$. Our main tool is a description of the regularly varying tails of $μ$ in terms of the behavior of the corresponding $S$-transform at $0^-$. We also describe the ta…
We obtain new upper tail probabilities of $m$-times integrated Brownian motions under the uniform norm and the $L^p$ norm. For the uniform norm, Talagrand's approach is used, while for the $L^p$ norm, Zolotare's approach together with suitable metric entropy and the associated small ball probabilities are used. This proposed method leads to an interesting and concrete connection between small ball probabilities and upper tail probabilities (large ball probabilities) for general Gaussian random variable in Banach spaces. As applications, explicit bounds are given for the largest eigenvalue of t…
In this paper, we study estimates on tail probabilities $\mathbb{P}(S_r \ge t)$ of several classes of subordinators under mild assumptions on the tail of its Lévy measure. As an application of that result, we obtain two-sided estimates for fundamental solutions of general homogeneous time fraction equations including those with Dirichlet boundary conditions.
This article studies asymptotic approximations of ruin probabilities of multivariate random walks with heavy-tailed increments. Under our assumptions, the distributions of the increments are closely connected to multivariate subexponentiality and admit dependence between components. Keywords: subexponential distribution, ruin probability, multivariate random walk
We show bounds on tail probabilities for quadratic forms in sub-gaussian non-necessarily independent random variables. Our main tool will be estimates of the Luxemburg norms of such forms. This will allow us to formulate the above-mentioned bounds. As an example we give estimates of the excess loss in fixed design linear regression in dependent observations.
We provide exact asymptotics for the tail probabilities $\mathbb{P} \{S_{n,r} > x\}$ as $x \to \infty$, for fix $n$, where $S_{n,r}$ is the $r$-trimmed partial sum of i.i.d. St. Petersburg random variables. In particular, we prove that although the St. Petersburg distribution is only O-subexponential, the subexponential property almost holds. We also determine the exact tail behavior of the $r$-trimmed limits.
For a class of stationary regularly varying and weakly dependent time series, we prove the so-called complete convergence result for the corresponding space-time point processes. As an application of our main theorem, we give a simple proof of the invariance principle for the corresponding partial maximum process.
The tail measure of a regularly varying stationary time series has been recently introduced. It is used in this contribution to reconsider certain properties of the tail process and establish new ones. A new formulation of the time change formula is used to establish identities, some of which were indirectly known and some of which are new.
Let $\{X_1, X_2, ... \}$ be a sequence of dependent heavy-tailed random variables with distributions $F_1, F_2,...$ on $(-\infty,\infty)$, and let $τ$ be a nonnegative integer-valued random variable independent of the sequence $\{X_k, k \ge 1\}$. In this framework, we study the asymptotic behavior of the tail probabilities of the quantities $X_{(n)} = \max_{1\le k \le n} X_k$, $S_n =\sum_{k=1}^n X_k$ and $S_{(n)}=\max_{1\le k\le n} S_k$ for $n>1$, and for those of their randomized versions $X_{(τ)}$, $S_τ$ and $S_{(τ)}$. We also consider applications of the results obtained to some commonly-us…
We consider a fluid queue fed by multiple On-Off flows with heavy-tailed (regularly varying) On periods. Under fairly mild assumptions, we prove that the workload distribution is asymptotically equivalent to that in a reduced system. The reduced system consists of a ``dominant'' subset of the flows, with the original service rate subtracted by the mean rate of the other flows. We describe how a dominant set may be determined from a simple knapsack formulation. The dominant set consists of a ``minimally critical'' set of On-Off flows with regularly varying On periods. In case the dominant set c…
Let $\{ξ_n\}$ be a sequence of independent and identically distributed random variables. In this paper we study the comparison for two upper tail probabilities $\mathbb{P}\{\sum_{n=1}^{\infty}a_n|ξ_n|^p\geq r\}$ and $\mathbb{P}\{\sum_{n=1}^{\infty}b_n|ξ_n|^p\geq r\}$ as $r\rightarrow\infty$ with two different real series $\{a_n\}$ and $\{b_n\}.$ The first result is for Gaussian random variables $\{ξ_n\},$ and in this case these two probabilities are equivalent after suitable scaling. The second result is for more general random variables, thus a weaker form of equivalence (namely, logarithmic …
A multivariate, stationary time series is said to be jointly regularly varying if all its finite-dimensional distributions are multivariate regularly varying. This property is shown to be equivalent to weak convergence of the conditional distribution of the rescaled series given that, at a fixed time instant, its distance to the origin exceeds a threshold tending to infinity. The limit object, called the tail process, admits a decomposition in independent radial and angular components. Under an appropriate mixing condition, this tail process allows for a concise and explicit description of the…
We study the asymptotic tail behaviour of the first-passage time over a moving boundary for asymptotically $α$-stable Lévy processes with $α<1$. Our main result states that if the left tail of the Lévy measure is regularly varying with index $- α$ and the moving boundary is equal to $1 - t^γ$ for some $γ<1/α$, then the probability that the process stays below the moving boundary has the same asymptotic polynomial order as in the case of a constant boundary. The same is true for the increasing boundary $1 + t^γ$ with $γ<1/α$ under the assumption of a regularly varying right tail with index $- α…
Let $ξ_1, ξ_2, \dots$ be i.i.d. non-negative random variables whose tail varies regularly with index $-1$, let $S_n$ be the sum and $M_n$ the largest of the first $n$ values. We clarify for which sequences $x_n\to\infty$ we have $\mathbb P(S_n \ge x_n) \sim \mathbb P(M_n \ge x_n)$ as $n\to\infty$. Outside this regime, the typical size of $S_n$ conditioned on exceeding $x_n$ is not completely determined by the largest summand and we provide an appropriate correction term which involves the integrated tail of $ξ_1$.
In this paper, we provide a review on the kernel method, which is one of the options for characterizing so-called exact tail asymptotic properties in stationary probabilities of two-dimensional random walks, discrete or continuous (or mixed), in the quarter plane. Many two-dimensional queueing systems can be modelled via these types of random walks. Stationary probabilities are one of the most sought statistical quantities in queueing analysis. However, explicit expressions are available only for a very limited number of models. Therefore, tail asymptotic properties become more important, sinc…
Let $\{X_t, t \geq 1\}$ be a sequence of identically distributed and pairwise asymptotically independent random variables with regularly varying tails and $\{ Θ_t, t\geq1 \}$ be a sequence of positive random variables independent of the sequence $\{X_t, t \geq 1\}$. We shall discuss the tail probabilities and almost sure convergence of $\xinf=\sum_{t=1}^{\infty}Θ_t X_t^{+}$ (where $X^+=\max\{0,X\}$) and $\max_{1\leq k<\infty} \sum_{t=1}^{k}Θ_t X_t$ and provide some sufficient conditions motivated by Denisov and Zwart (2007) as alternatives to the usual moment conditions. In particular, we illu…
Sequential Monte Carlo methods which involve sequential importance sampling and resampling are shown to provide a versatile approach to computing probabilities of rare events. By making use of martingale representations of the sequential Monte Carlo estimators, we show how resampling weights can be chosen to yield logarithmically efficient Monte Carlo estimates of large deviation probabilities for multidimensional Markov random walks.
Consider a random walk with a drift to the right on $\{0,\ldots,k\}$ where $k$ is random and geometrically distributed. We show that the tail $P[T>t]$ of the length $T$ of an excursion from $0$ decreases up to constants like $t^{-\varrho}$ for some $\varrho>0$ but is not regularly varying. We compute the oscillations of $t^\varrho\,P[T>t]$ as $t\to\infty$ explicitly.
To recover the topology of a manifold in the presence of heavy tailed or exponentially decaying noise, one must understand the behavior of geometric complexes whose points lie in the tail of these noise distributions. This study advances this line of inquiry, and demonstrates functional strong laws of large numbers for the Euler characteristic process of random geometric complexes formed by random points outside of an expanding ball in $\mathbb{R}^d$. When the points are drawn from a heavy tailed distribution with a regularly varying tail, the Euler characteristic process grows at a regularly …
